Soldiers Three - Penn State University

arms of the Collector’s wife, and Justus had covered his face
with his hands.
‘Girardenia heterophylla!’ repeated Gallio. ‘Krenk, why didn’t
you tell me? I could have saved you this. Woven fire! Anybody
but a naked Kol would have known it, and, if I’m a
judge of their ways, you’ll never get them back.’
He looked across the river to where the converts were still
wallowing and wailing in the shallows, and the laughter died
out of his eyes, for he saw that the Tubingen Mission to the
Buria Kol was dead.
Never again, though they hung mournfully round the deserted
school for three months, could Lotta or Justus coax
back even the most promising of their flock. No! The end of
conversion was the fire of the Bad Place—fire that ran through
the limbs and gnawed into the bones. Who dare a second
time tempt the anger of Dungara? Let the little man and his
wife go elsewhere. The Buria Kol would have none of them.
An unofficial message to Athon Daze that if a hair of their
heads were touched, Athon Daze and the priests of Dungara
would be hanged by Gallio at the temple shrine, protected
Justus and Lotta from the stumpy poisoned arrows of the
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Buria Kol, but neither fish nor fowl, honeycomb, salt nor
young pig were brought to their doors any more. And, alas!
man cannot live by grace alone if meat be wanting.
‘Let us go, mine wife,’ said Justus; ‘there is no good here,
and the Lord has willed that some other man shall the work
take—in good time—in His own good time. We will go away,
and I will—yes—some botany bestudy.’
If any one is anxious to convert the Buria Kol afresh, there
lies at least the core of a mission-house under the hill of Panth.
But the chapel and school have long since fallen back into
jungle.